These are exciting times for gamers. The industry is in change mode, with the promise of new ways to enjoy the pastime right around the corner. We have technology to thank for how quickly gaming has advanced over the past decade. From cloud gaming and artificial intelligence (AI), to the growth of cross-platform play and virtual and augmented reality, these emerging trends are exciting. Here, we look at how they’ll impact the next decade of gaming.
Advancements in Artificial Intelligence
If you’ve ever visited a platform and got the uncanny sense that it knew a lot about you, it wasn’t your imagination; it was likely artificial intelligence (AI) at work. The iGaming industry has been at the forefront of using AI to make the gaming experience more enjoyable. 
When a person logs onto an online casino, AI is at work in the background, analysing their behaviour and gathering information about their gaming preferences. If that person plays a game like roulette, AI will take note of the preference. The next time they visit the platform, the algorithm may suggest different variants of roulette or recommend similar board and table games. In this way, AI helps make the online casino experience feel more personal to the visitor and increases the chances they’ll form a positive opinion of the website.
It’s not only online casinos that AI is impacting. If you’ve ever played a game with non-playable characters (NPCs), you know how uninspiring they can be — sticking to rigid scripts and rarely deviating from predefined behaviours. AI is changing all of this, making NPCs more intelligent and lifelike. AI-powered NPCs can react in real time to your actions in a game and adapt their dialogue, strategies, and movements based on the decisions you make.
There’s also AI-powered content generation, which we can see on display in games like Minecraft and No Mans Sky. This technology has made it possible for developers to create ever-expanding worlds that change constantly and feel unique to the player. If you’ve ever wondered why you never run out of places to explore in Minecraft, procedural content generation is the reason why.
The Rise of Cloud Gaming
Buying an expensive gaming PC or console was once a rite of passage for serious gamers. After all, if you wanted to play the very best games, you had to invest in top-end hardware, no matter the price. Cloud Gaming is turning that paradigm on its head by giving gamers access to AAA titles on the device of their choice, whether that happens to be playing the latest hit on a smartphone while listening to Frank Ocean, or gaming on a budget PC in the living room with the TV on in the background.
Services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce Now have made it possible to stream games from the cloud to almost any device. For a monthly subscription fee, these services offer tons of tiles and are compatible with a wide range of devices.
Cloud gaming has lowered the barriers to entry into serious gaming by making it much more affordable. However, a stable internet connection is necessary for it to work, limiting its viability in some parts of the world.
The Growth of Cross-Platform Play
Most gamers remember the days when, if your friend owned an Xbox and you owned a PlayStation, you couldn’t play together online. You may have even chosen your console based on what most of your friends had, just so you could play together. While there are still some limitations, we’re getting closer to a world where the major platforms talk to each other. Cross-platform play allows gamers to play online together, no matter what console they own.
Titles like Fortnite and Call of Duty have successfully implemented cross-platform functionality and other developers are following suit, creating games that can be played across platforms. One of the biggest selling points of cross-platform play is its ability to bring gamers together and create more active communities.